4 ms·
How can they make their chips commercially competitive? US input costs are a lot higher than both TSMC's and China's. There is a reason that US manufacturers h
by simonblack 4y ago
How can they make their chips commercially competitive? US input costs are a lot higher than both TSMC's and China's.
There is a reason that US manufacturers have outsourced their production to Asia for the last three decades.
- 988747 4y agoWell, chip manufacturing is mostly automated, so labor costs are insignificant. Also, Intel is on path to regaining process lead, they can compete with TSMC and Samsung based on quality.
- rjzzleep 4y agoI'd say yes and no. TSMC has over 60000 employees. They're also probably the biggest siphon of fresh graduates in Taiwan. Like most Taiwanese companies people work like slaves(not Foxconn China level) and have fairly low salaries. Intel has twice as many employees, but then again they're also kind of all over the place. I can't really comment how important labor costs are, but I don't think that they're insignificant.
- simonblack 4y agoso labor costs are insignificant. When chip technology took off in the 1970s, the US semiconductor manufacturers had probably over 80% of the manufacturing share. Why is that share so low today? Why is it that the US manufacturers would be lucky to reach double-digits in manufacturing share? How did they get to drop to so low in the first place? The running cost of fabs is not the only cost of new fabs.
- datalopers 4y agoThe US government is pouring a lot of money into subsidizing the cost of spinning up fabs. Additionally, China will help western foundries achieve success because they want Taiwan.
- SanjayMehta 4y ago> Additionally, China will help western foundries achieve success because they want Taiwan. Can you elaborate on this point?
- jwond 4y agoI imagine the logic is that if the US has its own domestic chip production and isn’t so dependent on Taiwanese chips, then the US may not care as much if China invades Taiwan.
- nonethewiser 4y agoTerrible reasoning, but yes I think that's what he means
- chillwaves 4y agoIgnores the fact the island itself acts a buffer to China's SE expansion/projection of power. There is a lot of strategic value to the island, even without the chips.
- SanjayMehta 4y agoThat makes sense, and as someone else pointed out, Taiwan has strategic value by itself.
- heavyset_go 4y agoThis, the CHIPS act was recently signed. Hundreds of billions are being invested in building onshore fabs.
- rjzzleep 4y agoThe US also has a 5 times bigger military budget than the worlds next 5 biggest militaries combined. How do you explain the fact that the US has been years behind China and Russia in terms of hypersonic missile capabilities? Money alone doesn't make the world go round. Trust does. People work for early stage startups for free because they trust the founders. When I was researching my master thesis 90% of the papers authors were either Chinese or Indian of origin(probably of US universities). A significant number of Chinese-American scientists are making their way back to China for fear of unfair prosecution. Stigmatization of Chinese-Americans during Covid didn't help either. I'd be willing to bet that Japans TSMC fab will be done faster than the US's
- _2d30 4y agoMarginal costs in semiconductors are very low.
- amelius 4y agoRobotics.
- coredog64 4y agoUm, you might want to let Intel know that the US is too expensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si... By my count, of the 7 fabs on the latest process, 5 are in the US.
- simonblack 4y agoIntel has been acknowledged to be having problems in keeping up with TSMC's progress towards 1 nm. They are falling behind.